37 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 10 BREAKHOUSE INC. ‘Breaking’ down the design strategy When asked to describe Breakhouse’s design strategy Van den brink states that the company has broken their design approach into three clearly defined steps or stages involving research, creating, and delivering. “We are very strategic in our thinking and our design solutions are not coming from a purely aesthetic point of view which is often the case for a lot of designers,” Vandenbrink explains when asked to describe the company’s design approach. With the element of branding the process is viewed from another angle, he outlines. “When you end up designing based on research into what let’s say a restaurant is looking to do in its competitive landscape or a retail space, for example, we need to know how to position that best, so that it stands out and that is true to what the offering is intended to be and the experience we’re trying to create,” he outlines. “This means that our design is looking to empower that strategic position.” “When we are doing that research and investigation first, then we know we’re designing it around activating a business and it’s great because it can give you an illustration of whether a design is on track or not because you are hitting it relative to specific markers of what the space has to do or the brand has to communicate,” Vandenbrink continues. The second stage of the design approach concerns working through the design with the client keeping the benchmarks of their branding in mind leading to the third leg of the designer stool- activation. “This last step is being part of the build or construction document process.”
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